


Relativity of Simultaneity

by ignipes



Series: Parallax [3]
Category: Panic At The Disco
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-14
Updated: 2009-03-14
Packaged: 2017-10-27 17:20:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/298192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are times Ryan can't remember where the metal ends and the flesh begins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Relativity of Simultaneity

Ryan imagines he can feel what his body parts used to be before they were sculpted and machined and wired into arms and legs and ribs and nerves. The metal in his hands is an alloy of the same material used to build flexible mining tunnels on unstable asteroids; the delicate circuitry connecting his brain to his artificial nerves is based on the same systems that guide exploration probes into gas giants and stars.

Everything is salvaged, reused, reformed for a specific purpose. If the metal is alive, he thinks—

And it is alive. He doesn't doubt that anymore. Something has changed since the _Nova Gloria_ , although Pete denies he's doing anything more than updating the system and improving integration. But Ryan can feel the new parts as well as he can feel his flesh and blood: the cold sting of snow, tiredness at the end of a long day, the roughness of Spencer's beard under his fingertips, the weight of the cat sleeping on the foot of the bed. He can feel it _more_ than he ever could before.

("You're imagining it," Patrick says bluntly, but Patrick doesn't have any mechanical parts.)

He can feel it when he's awake, asleep, moving, lying still, paying attention or not. It's always there, the racing signals and constant feedback and give-and-take of systems no longer fighting to extinguish one another, but reluctantly cooperating instead.

("You were pretty glitchy before," Pete says skeptically. His fingers drum against Ryan's, almost imperceptibly soft, a touch Ryan never could have felt before. "Maybe that's what you're noticing.")

He no longer wakes up in the middle of the night with the feeling that his body is trying to kill itself.

— If the metal is alive, Ryan thinks, perhaps it has a memory as well.

-

A crew of Pete's allies pick up an abandoned courier ship and haul it to East. There are two stations in orbit around the planet, both used mostly for long-range communications and rendezvous with ships that can't land on the planet's surface. They're old Venusian-style stations with minimal comforts and no artificial gravity, so the cyborgs most modified for long-term zero-grav spend the most time on board.

The salvage crew drops the ship in a station dock, accepts payment, leaves again. One man stays behind to repair the ship and, according to Patrick, find a new crew to fly with for a while. "He doesn't like sticking in one place for long," Patrick explains with a shrug, "but he's a good guy."

The ship is called _Candleswan_ and after inspecting it Andy tells them, "You'll have to talk to Bryar to work out a deal, but if you can fix it, you can fly it." His tone makes it clear he doesn't think they'll be able to fix it, but Jon's eyes light up like a kid setting eyes on his first Exodus Day feast and Spencer immediately demands a copy of the complete flight and maintenance records. They grab a ride on the next surface-to-satellite flight to have a look at the man and the ship.

"It's a bird," Brendon says. He's fidgety and restless, jabbing constantly at the fire with the poker, sending up showers of sparks.

 "What is?" Ryan asks. Night in the little house at the edge of the village is strangely quiet with just the two of them. It'll be another three days before Spencer and Jon come back. Ryan tries to remember when he was last apart from Spencer for that long.

"A candleswan." Brendon makes a quick flapping motions with his hands; shadows dance across the log walls. "They're native to Taupa V. That's in the—"

"I know where it is," Ryan interrupts. He hasn't made a single navigation calculation since they arrived on East, but he can see the coordinates in his mind if he concentrates. "Gas mining colony in the Outer Ring."

Brendon bobs his head in agreement. "Right. The birds, the candleswans, they're about this big." He holds his hands apart to indicate a creature about Clover's size. "But they have really long necks and a huge wingspan, probably as long as you. Some people consider them a delicacy, but mostly they taste kind of oily and bitter, like licking an old combustion engine."

It's still difficult to imagine Brendon sitting at the high table in the Chancellor's Hall on Eden, tasting exotic gas-flavored birds and talking to the leaders of powerful Inner Ring planets.

Brendon goes on, "They're not really birds at all, obviously, not according to the First System classification, but they kind of look like birds and they fly. And they breathe fire."

Ryan looks at him sharply. "Seriously?"

"Seriously," Brendon says with a grin. "That's how they survive. They eat a mixture of the gas from the vents on Taupa - they sit over the vents and breathe it in, that's all the eating they do - and expel what they don't need. There's so much in the Taupa atmosphere that's combustible their breath catches fire. The people who catch them consider it a badge of honor to have burn scars or missing eyebrows."

"We're supposed to go into space in a ship named after an gas-eating flying bird-thing that breathes fire?"

"Only if we can fix it." Like Spencer and Jon, Brendon is excited about the prospect of leaving East. He wants to go up to the station as well but agreed to wait until they decide if there's anything he can do. "I like the name," Brendon says. "It's the name of something that's supposed to fly. There aren't enough ships with names like that."

"They'll fix it," Ryan says. He hasn't seen the ship and didn't listen to Andy's description of what shape it's in, but he doesn't have a doubt in his mind. Jon fixed their last ship, and before that, before Jon and even before Brendon, Spencer had fixed Ryan. It's hard for Ryan to imagine them giving up on any broken thing. He wonders what it would be like to look at life like that, to see things that are faltering and falling apart and feel the itch to put them back together, coax them back to life.

"I hope so," Brendon says, staring into the fire.

And Ryan wonders too what it would be like to see the galaxy as Brendon does, filled with wonders and mysteries and beauty, and to ache to discover all of it in spite of every horror he's endured and everything he's lost.

The others talk sometimes about where they'll go when they leave East. They all agree they owe Pete and Patrick, so there might be transport runs and maybe some recon, but afterward they'll be free to go where they like. Every time they ask Ryan's opinion he gives a noncommittal one-word answer and changes the subject. Spencer has noticed—he always notices—but he hasn't said anything yet.

Ryan doesn't know what he'll say when he does. He used to see the galaxy as a four-dimensional navigation chart made up of vectors and jump coordinates and Lagrange points and gravity wells, obstacles to be identified and dangers to be avoided, the unique signature of every star and every planet in an array of measurements, all of it woven together in the compromise between velocity and position and time. He used to find it comforting that everything a navigator needs to know makes sense if only there are enough numbers to describe it. But he's afraid if he tries to calculate a position or a jump coordinate now it will all be gibberish. When he closes his eyes, all he can see is empty space and distant, unfamiliar stars. All he can feel is the cold, unrelenting pain of darkness stripping his arms and legs away.

Brendon sleeps with him in the main room while Jon and Spencer are on the station. Brendon talks in his sleep and he's not as careful about Ryan's healing body as Spencer is. But Ryan doesn't mind. He prefers company to sleeping alone, and he only sleeps a few hours a night anyway. No matter how tired he is, his body is always too awake: thrumming with misplaced energy, signals and answers firing along every nerve, muscles testing themselves against metallic bones.

-

On the day Spencer and Jon are due to return to the surface, Ryan is in the infirmary reading through resistance reports while Lara, one of the doctors, works on his left hand.

"Make a fist," Lara says.

Ryan does as she says and feels a prick of white-hot heat on his wrist, but he doesn't look to see what she's doing. He knows the routine; he could go through one of these examinations in his sleep by now. And it's been months since he's been up to date with everything going on in the scattered factions of the rebellion. There is a lot to catch up with, a lot of developments he didn't know about.

"Open," Lara says. Another hot sting, and she hums thoughtfully and changes her position with quiet whir of machinery. All four of Lara's limbs are cybernetic, overly long and spindly like the legs of a spider, and she hasn't tried to disguise them at all. She has no hands, only claws that conceal a variety of tools, and she does most of the delicate operation work on patients because her fine motor control is dozens of times better than flesh and blood.

She's also content to work without idle chitchat, and she's Ryan's favorite for that reason alone. Even here, even amongst friends and allies, there are too many things he can't say, too many reasons to awkwardly change the subject and refuse a simple question. They're all carrying secrets - Spencer's, Brendon's especially - and carrying them together doesn't make them any less wary. So Ryan reads while Lara works. The reports are full of code names for people and places, missions in every stage from initial idea to debriefing, all of it carefully encoded and scripted into a language only a handful of people can decipher. Pete and Patrick and the colonists on East aren't central players in the resistance, not since they came to this remote planet to set up their infirmary, but they are connected enough to hear news from all over.

"Done," Lara says. "Let's take a look at your other hand."

Ryan flexes his left hand. "Is it okay?"

Lara raises one eyebrow. There's a long scar down the side of her face, a pale line against her dark skin, and it bends when she smiles. "I don't know, Ross. You tell me. Is it okay?"

"It feels..." He bends his fingers one by one, the metal and the flesh, touching his thumb to the fingertips. "They're more sensitive than they were before."

"All of them? Even the biological ones?"

Ryan frowns. "I don't know. Maybe? Should they be?"

Lara's smile turns wry. "Good question, kid. Come on, let's see the other hand."

She rolls her stool around to his other side, and Ryan switches the tablet from his right hand to his left. He extends his right hand and starts reading again. A word midway down the screen catches his eye: _Ypsilon-X5H_. He blinks and scans to the top of the report to read it more carefully.

"Ross," Lara says sternly, "you need to relax."

"What? Oh, sorry." Ryan sets the tablet aside. He's making a fist without realizing it, and Lara is glaring at him. "Sorry," he says again. He opens his hand and offers, "I haven't had any problems with this one. It seems fine when I... I mean, whenever. No problems."

"What you do with your right hand is your own business, kid, but I'm going to check anyway."

Ryan rolls his eyes and Lara laughs. She continues her examination, and Ryan answers each of her questions with a short, quick answer.

"You in a hurry to go somewhere?" Lara asks, rolling up the legs of his pants to take a look at his feet and ankles.

 "No." Ryan doesn't glance at the tablet on the table beside him. _Admiral Gaitling, deceased,_ , the report says, translated and decoded. _Official designation: suspicious circumstances. Mission: suspected to be ongoing._ He doesn't recognize the code name of the person who made the report, and there's no indication whatsoever whose mission it is. Rumors and hearsay, lies and misdirections, the resistance fighters have to be as good at it as the Alliance, or better.

When Lara is finally finished, she says, "Do you need help back to your place?"

Ryan bends down to pull on his shoes and shakes his head. "I'll be fine." He can't go far and he definitely can't run yet, but if he's careful and avoids the icy patches he doesn't have trouble walking around the village without help. Of all the stages of his recovery, he thinks finally getting past the humiliation of being carried everywhere is probably the best. He pauses at the door and asks, "Is Pete around? I wanted to say hi."

Lara glances at him over the top of the tablet where she making notes. "I think he's in the lab," she says. "A message came in on subspace earlier and he's been acting weird ever since." She tilts her head to one side. "Weirder than normal."

"What kind of message?"

Lara splays the claws of one appendage wide in an exasperated gesture. "Who knows? Maybe you can find out."

Ryan goes through the front room of he infirmary and to the connecting door to Pete and Patrick's laboratory, but he hesitates in the doorway. He doesn't like the laboratory: it reminds him too much of the room on the _Nova Gloria_ where he woke on a cold table with two men standing over him and a scream ripping out of his throat. But it's only a superficial resemblance. Pete's lab is cluttered where the other was neat; every surface is covered with tools and parts and unrecognizable bits of machinery and cybernetic anatomy. There are screens on the walls displaying endlessly shifting diagrams and schematics - when there's enough power to run them - and what looks like at least four or five ongoing projects on the long table in the center of the room.

Pete is perched on a stool by the table. He's working on a long, curved puzzle of shimmering copper-colored metal suspended above the table by two clamps. After a moment Ryan recognizes it as a spinal cord and the interconnected vertebrae surrounding it. Pete touches a long needle to one end and tiny sparks of blue light race along its length.

"Who is that for?" Ryan asks.

Pete glances up. "Nobody. It doesn't even work." He frowns at the metallic spine. "I can't figure out why."

"Has anybody ever built a fully functioning human spine?"

The frown turns into a crooked smile. "Not yet. Ask me again in a few months. Come in, make yourself at home. What did Lara say?"

Ryan stays close to the doorway. "She says you're acting weird."

Pete glares at him briefly over the spine. "About _you_ , dumbass. What did she say about you?"

Ryan knows Pete will ask Lara about it later and read her notes, so he shrugs it off and asks, "What's going on? Is everything okay?"

"Everything's fine," Pete says shortly. Then he sighs and rests his head on the lab table with a soft thump. "We picked this planet because it's safe. Safe and remote. But it's so _fucking_ far away from everything."

"Are you going somewhere?" Ryan asks.

Pete shakes his head without looking up. "Somebody's trying to get here. Some... some old friends." He lifts his head suddenly and spins around on the stool until he's facing away from Ryan. "There's only ever been two of you, you know. It's not like we—if it were up to Patrick we never would. Everybody here—you can ask them if you don't believe me. It wasn't like that."

It takes Ryan a moment to spot what he's looking at: amongst the screens and displays on the laboratory wall there is a drawing. It's ink on paper - real ink and real paper made from real trees, as far as he can tell - a simple portrait of a young man's face. He's handsome in a sharp way, and he's smiling awkwardly, as though he doesn't want to admit he's amused. There are faint blue lines sketched over the original drawing. Ryan can't see them clearly from across the room, but he's seen enough of them around the lab to know what it is: it's a reconstruction diagram. Whoever that young man is, Pete used the drawing and the sketched additions to rebuild his face.

Ryan asks, "What happened to him?"

"Now, or then?" Pete goes on without waiting for an answer, "It was the Larousse virus. You know what that shit does?"

Ryan feels a chill go through him. He knows. He's read the reports, seen the images, heard the stories from unlikely survivors. He's woken up in the middle of the night more times than he can count to find Spencer clawing at his own skin and babbling incoherently about rivers of blood.

"It's ugly. It's really fucking ugly." Pete shakes his head. He's still facing away from Ryan. "It gets into your blood, eats you away from the inside. Massive cell death, whole systems shut down. People try to cut off their own arms and legs, rip out of their eyes, their intestines, anything they can think of to stop it from spreading. It does stop, eventually, but usually only after so much of the body is gone there's no way to survive."

"Unless you rebuild it," Ryan says.

"Right. Unless." Pete turns on his stool again and smiles wryly. "He was the second and last time I ever operated on somebody without their permission," he says. "You were the first."

"Lucky me." Ryan steps away from the door and walks around to lean against the table beside Pete. He looks up at the drawing and asks, "What's wrong with him now? Is the virus back?"

"I don't know. His body is rejecting the mechanical parts, but until he gets here..." Pete rubs his hand through his hair, making it stick out wildly. "He's got his brother, his wife trying to help, but none of them know the first fucking thing about _anything_."

"You'll fix him when he gets here," Ryan says.

 "If he gets here in time."

Ryan touches his shoulder before walking back to the door. He pulls it open, pauses, and glanced back. "Where did he contract the virus?"

"I don't know exactly," Pete says. "Some reallocated backwater planet. Hera, Ypsilon, Plenus, someplace like that. They're not exactly the kind of people who talk about where they're from. Why?"

That means they're members of the resistance. That means they're hiding.

"No reason," Ryan says. "See you later."

He stops in the infirmary to grab a spare tablet before going back to the little house at the edge of the village.

-

Five hours later it's getting dark and clouds are gathering overhead again. It's been clear for a few days, sunny enough to give the village all the power it needs, but there is never a long reprieve between storms.

 Ryan spends the day sitting at the table in the cabin searching through the datastream. East is safe and remote, and that means it's far enough from everything that even on the subspace bands it takes a while for news to reach them. But news does get here eventually, and Ryan has hundreds of reports to comb through.

The first thing he looks for is any news about their capture by the _Nova Gloria_ , something he ought to have done weeks ago, as soon as he felt well enough. It was a strange enough event for there to be chatter about it, but if there was anything particularly alarming somebody would have found it and mentioned it already. They've been on East for over three months, and nobody has yet said at dinner, "Hey, did you hear the Chancellor's long lost son was found and lost again?" Brendon thinks the crew of the _Nova Gloria_ who identified him have probably been executed and the entire incident covered up, but Ryan hasn't verified it until now. After about an hour of searching the only credible mention he can find is that an unnamed ship captured a unidentified, stolen vessel manned by a known traitor and three off-records, and the situation was handled accordingly. It's typical Alliance language for covering their asses; the last thing the fleet admirals want is word getting out that four rebels escaped from a warship and haven't been apprehended.

Or that they let the Chancellor's son slip from their grasp.

It's only mildly reassuring - if anybody wants to dig deeper, no doubt they'll find more - but Ryan sets it aside.

He gets up to light the fire. The power is on and the heating system is working, but once he got over the strangeness of having open flames in the room he found the warm, flickering glow of firelight comforting, especially when he's alone. Brendon and Jon had to teach him how to make a fire that would burn hot and bright for hours; Brendon learned on the streets of Aventine, Jon in the refugee camps on Pacifica IV, and they both agree burning wood smells a hundred times better than burning refuse.

When the fire is burning steadily, Ryan goes back to the table and starts searching the records again. Clover jumps onto the table to join him, and he strokes her absently with one hand while he taps the tablet with the other. This time he looks for any mention of Ypsilon-X5H or any of the dozens of code names rebels use for it. It's not a straightforward process. Every faction of resistance fighters has its own coded language, and a name used for one planet by one group might mean something else entirely for another. Information is slippery and untrustworthy in the resistance, and Ryan's been out of touch for too long.

But he finds what he's looking for. A list of events. It's not enough to form a pattern - he tells himself - but it is a list. There are connections.

He powers down the tablet and sits back in his chair. He scratches behind Clover's ears.

"Don't tell anyone what we found," he says, then immediately feels foolish. Jon talks to Clover all the time, but for some reason it never seems ridiculous when he does it. Ryan runs a finger down the cat's spine. He doesn't know if he's imagining it or if he really can feel each individual hair bending and parting under his touch. "I'll take care of it," he says.

Clover flicks her tail in response.

Ryan is still sitting at the table when he hears voices outside. The door opens and Brendon comes in, Jon and Spencer right behind him.

"Look who I found!" Brendon says. He's flushed from the cold, pink to the tips of his ears. He went up to the landing field to meet the station shuttle. "They followed me home. Can we keep them?"

Ryan stands up and waits just long enough for Spencer to get his coat off before wrapping his arms around Spencer's neck and kissing him. Spencer makes a surprised noise against his mouth, but he tilts his head into it and parts his lips and doesn't pull away.

"Hey," Spencer says when they part. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," Ryan says. "I just—it's been quiet. Without you guys here." He can hear Jon talking and Brendon laughing brightly in the next room.

Spencer rubs his hand in small circles on the small of Ryan's back and smiles. "I missed you too."

Ryan holds on tighter and kisses him again.

-

They go down to the dining hall for supper and claim seats at their usual table in a corner at the back of the room.

"Five or six weeks," Jon says. He stabs his fork at his plate and makes a skeptical face. "What is this?"

"You'll have to ask Seb," Brendon says. Seb is the village cook. He races around his kitchen on a modified hover platform and insists he has no need for legs, and he's the only person Ryan has ever met with an actual flamethrower built into his cybernetic arm. He claims he needs it for his recipes, but Ryan's heard enough rumors from the other colonists to know he mostly uses the flamethrower to scare people who criticize his cooking. Brendon takes a huge bite and chews thoughtfully. "It's good. Kind of... stringy, but not in a bad way. Is that all you need, really? Six weeks?"

"I think so." Jon tastes the food hesitantly, then shrugs and begins to eat in earnest. "It's in bad shape, but there's nothing vital missing. Just a lot of damage."

"Battle damage," Spencer clarifies. "It looks like a rail assault. The thing's been blasted to hell."

"Halfway to hell," Jon corrects. "We can bring it back."

Ryan looks at Spencer. "Do you think you can?"

 Spencer shrugs. "Jon knows better than me, and Bryar agrees with him. If they say it can be fixed, it can be fixed." Spencer is trying to sound nonchalant, but Ryan hears the cautious excitement in his voice. He knows how much Spencer misses flying, how hard it has been for him to be grounded for months on end.

Brendon pokes Jon in the arm. "Speaking of your new best friend, I want to hear about his dogs."

"Dogs?" Ryan asks.

Jon grins. "Sort of. Not really. Bob has these—they really aren't dogs. But he calls them dogs."

"They're more like dog-cat-reptile... mutant... hybrid... things," Spencer says, tracing a nonsense drawing in the air with his fork. "With wings. And huge claws. And blue fur."

Brendon laughs, and Ryan says, "You're joking."

Jon shakes his head. "Nope. He rescued them from an experimental geneering lab. They're names are Rosie and Princess, but I swear, they look like they'd rip your throat out as soon as sniff you. But they're very gentle. Kind of cuddly, actually."

"Extremely cuddly," Spencer says drily.

"They like Spencer," Jon says. "Princess spent the entire time following him around the station. They're adapted to zero-grav, so they can bounce off the walls as well as anybody, and she would _not_ leave him alone. You should look out, Ryan. I think she's planning on eloping with him."

Ryan raises an eyebrow and rests his chin on hand. "Should I?" he says to Spencer, his lips twitching into a smile. "Are you going to leave me for a winged dog-cat-reptile mutant thing?"

Spencer considers the question. "Maybe," he says. "She doesn't drool in her sleep as much as you do."

Brendon and Jon both laugh loud enough that people at other tables turn to look. Spencer is smiling and his cheeks are pink, and Ryan leans over quickly to kiss the side of his mouth. "I think I can convince you to stay," he says, and Spencer's smile grows wider.

"So is that the plan, then?" Brendon asks when he's caught his breath. "Six weeks to repair the ship, and we'll leave?"

There's an awkward pause, and Ryan knows they're waiting for him. The dining hall suddenly feels too crowded and too warm, and he's aware of all the voices and bodies around them. He knows everybody here by name, but he doesn't know if he can trust them. Anybody could be listening, anybody could be paying attention to what they do and what they talk about, watching closely enough to put together the pieces. Pete and Patrick vouched for him - and the others by proxy - when they arrived, but that doesn't translate into automatic trust from the colony. There are a lot of people who don't like how they arrived, the mysterious ship and unanswered questions and their stubborn refusal to explain more. There are a lot of people who will be glad to see them go.

"Ryan?" Spencer says quietly. "Do you want to leave? We—" He glances at Brendon and Jon, and they both nod. "We've talked about it, and we think it's probably best, but if you..."

Ryan doesn't know what shows on his face, but Brendon says, "We weren't trying to exclude you. That's not why we... It's just that you've been so sick, and you've only recently started to..." He trails off but doesn't look away from Ryan.

"I'm so sorry," Ryan says. He tries for sarcasm but the words catch in his throat. "Lately I've been a little focused on having my entire body ripped apart and put back together."

"We know." Spencer makes a move like he's going to reach for Ryan's hand, but he stops himself. "We know, Ryan. But we're asking you now. What do you want to do?"

Ryan looks at Spencer for a long moment. "Fix the ship," he says. He looks at Jon, then Brendon. "Fix it as fast as you can, and we'll get the hell out of here. I'm tired of being stuck in one place." Nobody says anything, so he adds, "We should figure out where we want to go." He hasn't done any navigation calculations in months; he has only a vague idea where East is located in the galaxy. But suddenly his fingers are itching for a navigation program and he can all but see the familiar symbols scrolling across a display, points and connections and routes, opening the stars for them.

Spencer smiles, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes. "Sounds like a plan," he says.

-

Jon and Brendon retreat into their room and shut the door, and Ryan sits on the edge of the bed to undress. He feels tired all over, even though he knows the cybernetic parts don't experience fatigue like the biological ones do. It's unfamiliar for him: before he used to feel forever at war between a body that had never properly healed and mechanical additions with limits he didn't understand, and the lack of balance had nearly torn him apart.

He tosses his shoes aside and says, "When are you going back up to the station?"

Spencer doesn't answer at first. He's standing at the foot of the bed, watching Ryan. "So you do want to leave now?" he says.

"I said I did," Ryan says. "Why? Don't you?"

"I'm not talking about me." Spencer runs his hand through his hair and shakes his head. "I'm... Are you sure? Because if you're not, if you want to stay or you need more time or—or _anything_ , you need to say so."

"What the fuck, Spence," Ryan says, suddenly, sharply annoyed. "I'm not a fucking child. I don't need you to coddle me."

"That's not—Ryan." Spencer sighs, exasperated, and holds his hands out helplessly. "I don't know what's going on in your head anymore. Until tonight you haven't said anything about what you want to do next. And I know this is—I know you're still recovering. But I can't read your mind. I'm not one of Brendon's alien friends."

"I'm fine," Ryan says. "I want a ship. I want to leave. Okay? What more do you want to know?"

 "Are you?" Spencer asks. "Are you really? Because you seem—you seem okay? But you never _say_ , and I don't know if... Is it like before? Because you _weren't_ okay then, but—"

"How the hell would you know?" Ryan snaps. "You weren't _there_ before. You have no fucking idea how hard it was."

Spencer flinches and takes a step back. He opens his mouth, closes it, looks away and finally says, "You're right. I wasn't."

"Spencer."

"You're right. I don't have any idea. I'm sorry."

Spencer takes two steps toward the bathroom, but Ryan stands up to stop him. "Wait. Spence. Stop." He puts his hands on Spencer's shoulders and leans into kiss him; Spencer doesn't kiss him back, but he doesn't turn away either. He starts to undo the buttons of Spencer's shirt, brushing his fingers teasingly down his chest until he reaches the waistband of his pants.

Rolling his eyes, Spencer says, "Are you trying to distract me?"

"Yes." Ryan opens Spencer's pant but doesn't push them down. He slides his hands around to Spencer's back, momentarily distracted by how _warm_ he feels, how there are no longer any gaps of sensation at his metallic fingertips.

"Ryan, you're not supposed to—"

"I'm _fine_ ," Ryan says, placing open-mouthed kisses along the line of Spencer's collarbone. For the first time since the attack at Eliezer he thinks it might be true. "I'm fine. I've missed you," he says, and he doesn't know if Spencer hears it but he doesn't mean last night or the last few nights. He means three months of pain and exhaustion and frustration, three months of Spencer watching him and treating him as though he's made of glass.

Ryan pushes Spencer's shirt off his shoulders then slips his own over his head. He sits down on the bed, wriggles out of his pants and tugs on Spencer's hand impatiently. "Come _on_." When Spencer hesitates still, he adds, "I'm not going to break."

Another second passes before Spencer leans down, a hand on either side of Ryan, and kisses him. Ryan grabs his shoulders and pulls him down, and there's a moment of awkward, hurried shuffling as Spencer sheds his clothes and they crawl together up the bed. Then Ryan is lying on his back and Spencer is braced over him, looking at him intently. He opens his mouth to say something, but Ryan cuts him off with a kiss and slides one leg up to hook over Spencer's. He's already half-hard and he doesn't want to take his time, he doesn't want to give Spencer a chance to hesitate.

Spencer breaks the kiss, panting slightly, and at once lowers his head again to kiss along Ryan's jaw, down the line of his neck and along his shoulder, his mouth and fingers tracing along the lines where Ryan's skin meets the metal in his chest and arms. Much of the old scar tissue is gone, cut away with the damaged old parts, and everywhere Spencer touches is alive with sensation. Spencer mouths down his chest and closes a hand over his hip, and Ryan throws his head back against the bed and gasps. He hears Spencer laughs quietly, feels the puff of breath warm on his skin, the teasing touch of Spencer's tongue and scrape of his beard.

Ryan threads his fingers into Spencer's hair and pulls, just hard enough to get his attention. "Come back," he says roughly, "come here, come _back_ , just—"

Spencer's mouth is open and wet and he's smiling as he slides up Ryan's body again until they're pressed together, skin to skin everywhere. Ryan keeps one hand in Spencer's hair as he kisses him, swallowing the small, eager sounds he's making, and he slips the other between them. They're too hurried, too desperate for a good rhythm, but their cocks brush together with every stuttering jerk of their hips and Spencer groans into the crook of Ryan's neck when Ryan wraps his hand around them. He's babbling now, nonsense words hot and wet against Ryan's skin, and his grip on Ryan's upper arm is so tight it hurts. Ryan can feel Spencer _everywhere_ , warm and heavy and familiar, and the words resolve into his name—" _Ryan, Ryan, fuck, Ryan_ "—and he rocks hips up to get closer, _closer_ , and comes with a gasp.

He doesn't stop, he jerks Spencer with his now-slick fingers until Spencer's goes rigid above him and comes. Spencer collapses half on top of him, his mouth still open against Ryan's neck.

Ryan cards his fingers through Spencer's hair and when he's certain his voice will be steady he says, "It worked, didn't it?"

Spencer lifts his head to look at him through narrowed eyes. "What?"

"Distracting you."

Spencer stares at him for a second, then pushes himself up. Ryan grabs after him but Spencer shakes his hand away and goes into the bathroom, comes back with a towel to clean them up. He takes his time, swiping slowly over Ryan's stomach and cleaning each finger individually, his hair falling over his face and his lower lip caught between his teeth in concentration. When he's done he stands up again, and Ryan pushes the blankets down to slip underneath.

Spencer comes back from the bathroom and crawls into bed beside Ryan. He pulls the blankets up and rolls onto his side so they are lying face to face, breathing quietly in the darkness. Spencer reaches out and brushes his hand through Ryan's hair, over the back of his hair and down his neck. Ryan closes his eyes and lets Spencer pull him close to kiss him.

"You did," Spencer whispers.

Ryan looks at him in question.

"You did break," Spencer says. "You... fuck, Ryan, I wasn't there the first time and I should have been, but this time—and they—we shouldn't have gotten out of that, I don't know how the fuck we got out of that, but you—"

Ryan touches his fingertip to Spencer's lips, takes it away and kisses him. He snuggles closer and tucks his head against Spencer's shoulder. Spencer wraps his arms around Ryan, holding him almost uncomfortably tight. "I don't know why we did either, but we did," he says quietly. His memory of leaving the _Nova Gloria_ is lost in a red haze of terror and pain. He knows he told the aliens where to go, but he doesn't remember it. And he doesn't want to, not here in the safe, warm circle of Spencer's arms. "It's different now," he mumbles, mostly to himself.

A moment passes before Spencer asks, his voice sleepy and rough, "What is?"

"Me," Ryan says. He pulls back a little so he can look at Spencer. "I'm different now. It's not just... modifications, improvements. I used to wake up every morning and I would forget, I would think my hands were like they used to be, and it wasn't until I would move that I would remember there was something _wrong_ with me." He lifts one hand and flexes it slowly, bends each finger one at a time.

Spencer catches his hand and weaves their fingers together. "And now?"

"I don't forget anymore," Ryan says. He shakes his head. "But I don't _remember_ either. It just _is_."

"Is that... a bad thing?"

"No," Ryan says. "I don't think so. I'm trying to get used to it. I'm waiting for the feeling to go away. Nothing's really changed. I have better parts now, but I'm still half-machine. I'm still—"

"Frustrating," Spencer says, kissing Ryan's knuckles softly. "Annoying." Another kiss, on the edge of his wrist. "Difficult." A third, on the tip of his nose. He lets go of Ryan's hand to cup his head and lean over him and kiss him deeply. "Beautiful," he murmurs, the word barely more than a breath against Ryan's lips.

Ryan tangles a hand in Spencer's hair, pulls too hard, and arches into the kiss. "Don't ever leave me again," he whispers. "Don't, don't, you have to promise, _please_."

"I won't." Spencer touches the side of Ryan's face and kisses him gently. "I won't."

Eventually they fall asleep together under the heavy blankets. When Ryan wakes hours later, Spencer is lying on his stomach with one leg hooked over Ryan's and one arm flung across his chest. They both sprawl in their sleep, easier to do here than in a ship's berth.

Ryan turns onto his side and brushes Spencer's hair back from his face. Spencer wrinkles his nose and murmurs something unintelligible. Ryan watches him sleep until dawn.

-

Spencer and Jon go up to the station and _Candleswan_ for another three days. The day after they return, Ryan finds Jon in one of the storage buildings on the outskirts of the village.

Jon is sitting on a long, low metal container in the middle of the room. He's sorting through another, smaller box, separating coils of wire and pieces of circuitry into piles, alternately muttering to himself and humming under his breath.

Ryan watches him for a minute before tapping on a stack of crates to announce his presence. Jon looks up and smiles. "Hey, Ryan."

Ryan steps over to sit beside Jon on the container. He sets the tablet he's carrying on his knees and taps it nervously for a few seconds.

"What's wrong?" Jon asks, his expression concerned. He sets the box of parts aside. "Ryan?"

Ryan licks his lips. "I have to show you something." He powers the tablet on and brings up the list he's spent the last few days compiling. He starts to pass it to Jon but stops. "Do you know..." There's nobody else around. The storage buildings are only monitored by the colony's security system on the outside. But he speaks quietly nonetheless and glances around anxiously. "You know why Spencer deserted, don't you?"

Jon says, "The interrogators told me, and later I—I'm sorry, I should have talked to Spence, but I asked Brendon about it."

"It's fine," Ryan says. "Spencer doesn't like to talk about it, and Brendon knows most of the story anyway. He, um, you know Brendon always notices more than he lets on, and Spencer used to have—still has—nightmares about it, and..." Ryan jerks one shoulder, not quite a shrug. "It's okay. It's better that you know."

"Ryan, what's going on?"

Wordlessly, Ryan hands over the tablet. Jon looks at him steadily for a long moment before he begins to read. He doesn't say anything until he's finished, and Ryan waits impatiently, trying not to fidget, trying to ignore the growing knot of fear in his gut. He wants Jon to say he doesn't understand, to tell him he's seeing a pattern where there is none. But when Jon is done he sighs heavily and rubs his hand over the back of his neck. "You think all of these men were on that mission?"

Ryan nods. "I can't prove it," he says. "Not yet." He thinks he will be able to if he keeps digging.

"You haven't asked Spencer about it."

"No."

Jon is quiet for a minute. "Before I met you guys," he says, "I heard—secondhand, one of my friends on Zeta Dra told me about it—I heard the survivors of Ypsilon were organizing. No details, but I got the impression what they were interested was something... bigger. A large-scale attack against the Alliance. Not like this. Not personal."

"This is personal," Ryan says, gesturing at the tablet. "Somebody is hunting down everybody who was on that mission."

"Maybe."

"You don't think so?"

"I think you need to ask Spencer if he recognizes the names of these men," Jon says. "Why are you showing this to me instead of him?"

Ryan hesitates before answering. He looks down at his lap, at the metal container beneath them and scuffed, cluttered floor. The container bears the markings indicating Alliance missiles, the black paint old and faded, but anything could be stored inside. The sharp, acrid smell of the storage room reminds Ryan of the abandoned factories on Nuevo Montenegro where he and Spencer used to pretend to be explorers when they were kids. After Spencer left Ryan still went back sometimes; the factories were a safe place where nobody could find him.

"I know you don't like to talk about what you did before you met us," he says. Jon's expression closes down, but Ryan presses on. "But we're not stupid, Jon. We can make some pretty good guesses. And—look, if it were you, if you were looking for the people who destroyed your planet, what would you do now? Spencer's been off-grid for almost three years, but he's not anymore thanks to the _Nova Gloria_. The Alliance has covered that up, but they covered it up because of Brendon, not because they captured a traitor, and there's no way—"

"They won't keep quiet about that forever," Jon says. He bites his lips thoughtfully and looks up at the ceiling. "All right. Yes, if it were me, and I stumbled across a suspiciously vague report about a captured traitor and his crew, I would look until I found out what the Alliance wasn't saying. Not because it means anything by itself, but because it's unusual for the Alliance not to crow about executing a traitor."

"Their names are going to come out," Ryan says. "Both of them, eventually. Maybe somebody's already found them."

"Have you come across rumors about Brendon? I mean, more than the usual 'I bore the Chancellor's lost son's lovechild' stories?"

Ryan cracks a smile in spite of himself. "If anybody's bearing his lovechild, it'll be you."

Jon makes a face at him. "I'll take that as a no."

"Not yet," Ryan admits. "But we're remote here. We get most news after it filters through everybody else in the resistance."

"What are you going to do with this, Ryan? You know you have to tell them."

"I know. But I—what do you think we should do?"

"Exactly what we're already planning to do. We should leave. Fix the ship and run. Don't tell anybody where we're going."

"Yeah." Ryan picks up a coil of wire and twists it in his hands, sets it aside. "There's another problem."

Jon doesn't look surprised. "What is it?"

"Pete told me about this friend of his. A patient. He's coming here—I don't know when, but it's soon—and he had the Larousse virus. That's why he needed Pete."

"He's from Ypsilon?"

"Pete doesn't know."

"There are half a dozen places somebody could have contracted the Larousse virus," Jon points out. "And those are only the ones we know about. There are unconfirmed rumors of more. Stations, settlers, asteroid colonies. It might not mean anything."

"But if it does?"

"Ryan." Jon shoves one pile of parts aside and slides over to sit beside Ryan. He puts an arm around Ryan's shoulders and squeezes him gently. "I don't know. I don't know what we can do. Nobody is expecting any other ships to come here for weeks—except, I guess, this friend of Pete's who may or may not be exactly who we're trying to avoid. We're stuck here for now. But we are fixing the ship as fast as we can."

"I know," Ryan says. He tilts his head down to rest it on Jon's shoulder. "Spencer needs to fly to be happy."

"I think Spencer needs to be with you to be happy, but we can argue about that later. I also think you need to tell him." Ryan starts to speak, but Jon continues, "Soon, Ryan. I get it, okay? It's really, really great to see him not so scared all the time. It would be nice to get used to it. But—"

"I'll tell him," Ryan says. "I will. Tonight."

"We won't let anything happen to him," Jon says quietly. "To either of them. We'll keep them safe. We can do that."

Ryan closes his eyes and leans into Jon. "I hope you're right."

-

Lara is doing another examination. For the first time in weeks Ryan watches everything she does, every test, every decision. She's bent over his midsection, prodding carefully along the remaining skin of his left side with a tool that sends a peculiar, shivery sensation into his muscles.

After a few minutes she says without looking up, "Something on your mind?"

He doesn't know how long Lara has been a cyborg. He doesn't know how old she is or how far she is from home. Her face is strong and beautiful and unlined except for the thin white scar. Every move she makes is graceful, even when she's moving in a manner that should be impossible for a human.

Ryan asks, "Do you ever get used to it?"

Lara stops what she's doing and looks at him. For a long moment he thinks she's not going to answer, but then she says, "It was a bomb, right?"

"Yes."

"Me too. We were living on an asteroid colony, me and my husband and our little girl. I don't even remember the attack. I was asleep when it happened, and I woke up on a non-Alliance hospital ship weeks later. No arms, no legs. Just a stump with a head strapped to a bed." Lara extends one of her arm appendages as far as it will reach, halfway across the room. Her joints move smoothly, silently, twisting and turning in every angle with mechanical perfection. The metal is silver but dull rather than polished, like the featherlight material used in atmospheric gliders. Ryan wonders if Lara can feel what the metal used to be, what shape it held before it came to her. "The doctors on that ship were hacks, nothing like the guys here, but they kept me alive. The day I went in for the first operation was the last time I saw my daughter or my husband. They weren't hurt badly in the attack. I don't know where they ended up."

"I'm sorry." Ryan doesn't know what else to say.

"Some days I look down at myself and I think, 'Holy buggering prophets, it's a _monster_.'" Lara grins wryly and clacks the narrow ends of her claw together. "And some days I don't notice at all. Maybe one day I'll let Pete give me the wings he says he can build."

Her smile is genuine but her eyes are sad. Ryan says, "That would be amazing."

"Absolutely. I think—"

A loud chime interrupts Lara, and she turns quickly toward a display on one wall. Ryan knows what alarm it is: a ship has come into orbit. It's been two weeks since Pete told him about his Larousse virus patient, and according to Pete there's been no contact from the man since. Whatever could delay a ship that much likely isn't good.

He's sitting up and looking for his clothes even before Lara says, "If that's the patient Pete's been waiting for, he's going to need help."

Ryan buttons his shirt quickly and reaches for his shoes. "I'll get out of your way."

She calls out a distracted goodbye as Ryan leaves. He stops outside the door and looks up. It's the middle of the afternoon and the sky is overcast with grim, gray clouds. Spencer and Brendon and Jon are all up on the station working on _Candleswan_. Somewhere inside the infirmary Pete shouts a question and Ashlee answers, and all around the village people are emerging from the warmth of the buildings. A ship coming to East is a big deal even when it's expected.

Ryan rubs his arms briskly. He forgot to bring a jacket with him, and it's colder now than it was earlier. He walks through the village and up the path to their house, careful to avoid the patches of ice.


End file.
